


Stormy Evening

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, First War with Voldemort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:18:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius and Remus have problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stormy Evening

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

The sun was setting in blazing reds and soft violets, stark contrast to the dark clouds massing, heralding a coming storm. Sirius tried to light a cigarette but the wind carried any spark away before it could light. He threw his Muggle lighter away and reached for his wand, whispering `Incendio' and watching as the breeze picked up the glowing ashes from the end of his cigarette immediately, playing with it as it played with his hair, whipping it around his head.

The wind swallowed any other sounds up here, other than the fluttering of his clothes and the occasional bang of the door that led to the small flat roof. Bang. Sirius had jumped the first time, but now it was just noise, a backdrop for the tumultuous emotions whipping up a storm inside Sirius' mind. The rush of air in his ears had nothing on the rush of blood from the anger still pounding through him.

He took a deep drag of his cigarette and pushed the hair back from his face. Bang. The wind slamming the door shut. Sirius slamming the door open. Wind whistling through chimneys. Angry voices. `Who the hell is that?' `We were just talking' `I saw the way he looked at you...' `Oh, for Christ's sake, Sirius, what do you want me to say?' He closed his eyes and tried not to hear his own answer. `Say you're mine.' Quiet voice, trapped between anger and sadness. `It doesn't work that way, Sirius. It's never that simple.'

He sighed, more disturbed air around him.

Sirius liked things simple. He tended to simplify complicated issues down to their essence. He didn't have patience for subtleties. But Remus was the embodiment of complication, a walking, living, breathing subtlety. Remus seemed to exist solely to add shades of grey - and a rainbow of colours - to Sirius' monochromatic world- view.

Sirius tended to think in absolutes. A childhood weakness, he was aware of that. He'd been taught to think of the world as a two-caste system. Black and not Black. Wizard and vermin. Blood and magic. Shades of grey had no room in a Black education. Neither did right and wrong. Remus, however, was like the space between everything. Light and dark, wizard and creature, beast and man. He was both and neither, he was something Sirius had no words for, no precedence, he was something Sirius could never quite grasp or predict. Or control. Not that he wanted to control Remus.

Yeah, right, he thought to himself. Tell it to yourself often enough, you might even believe it.

Bang.

Not the wind this time, opening and shutting the door to the roof. A pause. Wind tearing at Sirius' coat and hair.

"You can't just run away every time we fight." Remus' voice sounded tight, controlled.

Sirius didn't turn. "I know. I'm sorry. I just ran out of things to say."

Remus' sigh was almost lost air in the wind, but Sirius heard it, distinguished it from the whistling and rushing of the storm.

For a while neither of them said anything. Sirius kept staring at the sun setting over London roofs, at the leaves doing colourful, elegant aerial manoeuvres with the rising and falling breezes. He could feel Remus' eyes on his back, Remus' stare resting on him like a physical weight.

It was growing cold. The wind was rushing through his clothes.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked finally when the silence made the wind seem too loud.

Another sigh, and he heard the tiredness in Remus' voice. "I don't know. I don't have any answers either, Sirius. I told you that from the start."

Sirius let his eyes slide shut as he remembered that conversation, almost a year ago now. Darkness and warmth and rain splattering against the bedroom window. `This is just as new for me as it is to you. You can't expect me to know what to do when either of us fucks up. You can always ask, but remember that most of the time I won't have any answers either.' Whispered words, smell of sweat and spent arousal, Sirius warm and sleepy and listening with a sex-drugged mind, thinking that all the answers he needed were right here anyway.

Only it was never quite this simple by day. Especially with the war looming more darkly than the clouds of the approaching thunderstorm massing over the north end of the city, ominous and grotesque as the light of the setting sun hit them. Vastly different personalities, complementing each other, yes, but clashing too, from time to time, then add to that the volatility of his own temper and Remus' emotional reticence...

"Sirius?" Hand on his shoulder. Remus sounded worried. Sirius knew his silence was unnerving to Remus; it was utterly unlike him. But he didn't have any words for the turmoil of emotions tearing at him. If he turned around, he knew he'd see Remus chewing at his bottom lip, brown eyes wide and shining pools of emotion.

"Sirius?" A mere whisper. This time touched with more than a hint of fear. "I..."

Sirius turned. Looked into Remus' eyes. Saw his fear reflected. Opened his arms. Remus stepped into them, wrapped his arms around Sirius with a grateful noise, and Sirius buried his face in Remus' coat. Blond hair whipped into his eyes and he blinked. "I'm sorry," Sirius whispered. "I'm sorry."

Remus just nodded against him, holding on tightly. "I know."

For a while they stood there, wind tangling their clothes and their hair, whipping leaves and dust around them, but not penetrating the circle of their embrace. They left no space for the storm between them.

When they drew back to face each other, their eyes mirrored the storm. "I was just talking to him," Remus whispered. "It was nothing."

Sirius sighed and tucked a strand of Remus' tousled hair back behind his ear. "I know. But it could have been. Something. I saw him looking at you. And you smiled. And something in me just started screaming, `Mine' over and over again."

It had almost frightened him, this intense, almost physically tangible possessiveness. It had taken all of his willpower not to go over and deck the man who had dared to talk to Remus. His Remus. It confused him, this need to own Remus, to know every step and breath the other took, to know every thought in his head, every secret, every desire, to have Remus as completely his as he felt himself to be Remus'.

The need flashed in him again, now, as intense as in memory, a need to own, to claim. He leaned in and kissed Remus, hard, desperately, like he'd wanted to do in the bookstore earlier when this random stranger had dared to want what was his. He backed Remus up against the wall, and Remus went willingly, letting Sirius take whatever he wanted, moaning breathily against Sirius' mouth.

"I am, you know. Yours," Remus murmured against Sirius' lips when they broke apart for air, looking at Sirius, eyes filled with tenderness and conviction. "I am," he whispered again.

Again Sirius felt the ache inside. Yes, you are, he thought, but not the way I'd like you to be. "But..." he continued for Remus.

Remus nodded, planting another kiss against Sirius' lips. "But, I'm still also mine. You don't own me. You can't control me. You can't be with me all the time, you can't tell me what to do."

Licking his lips, Sirius tried to answer, but couldn't, so he just nodded and let Remus pull him into his arms again. There were very few people Sirius truly loved, and Remus was beyond compare the person who held the most substantial part of Sirius' heart. Sirius wasn't the type to do anything half-measure, not even falling in love, and he loved Remus without reservation or inhibition, passionately and with everything he was.

Remus, however, was quiet, calm, rational, holding by the skin of his teeth the shores of safety Sirius had long since abandoned. Sirius believed that Remus loved him back, but he didn't believe Remus' love was of the thoroughly consuming kind that burned under Sirius' fingernails. Remus didn't want to own Sirius. Remus didn't want to control his every movement. Remus didn't feel the need to implant himself under Sirius' skin so the other would never be without him. Remus wasn't afraid.

No, that was a lie. Remus was afraid, Sirius could see it in his eyes. "Why is this so much easier for Prongs and Lily?" he asked with a faint smile.

Remus smiled back, but his eyes were sad. "Because they're them and we're us."

There was nothing Sirius could say to that. It was simple truth. James and Lily were normal, and not only because Lily was a girl. James and Lily were the settling types, the nest-builders, the family- providers. Remus and Sirius weren't. They were dreamers, both in their own ways, high-risk-job-takers and living-in-their-fantasies people, they were stumblers, but they never stumbled at the same time, and the only dream that they both lost themselves in was each other.

Remus pulled him back for another breath-stealing kiss, and the roar of the wind started to compete with the roar of Sirius' blood in his ears. Heat flashed through him, strong and almost violent, a need to bury himself under Remus' skin, to make Remus as desperate for him as he was for Remus. And yet it hardly seemed necessary, for Remus was kissing him as if the world was going to end, working on the buttons of Sirius' shirt with one hand while holding on to Sirius' hair with the other.

Sirius moaned as Remus hooked his leg around his hip, drawing him closer and grinding his arousal into Sirius'.

Panting, Sirius drew back. "Sex never solves anything."

Remus licked his lips. "Can you think of anything that will?"

Good point, Sirius wanted to say, but the sound was lost in Remus' mouth, against Remus' lips.

The wind ate their moans, rustled at their clothing, got in the way of fumbling fingers, and yet they weren't cold, didn't let themselves be deterred by the hair that fell into their eyes or the dust the wind stirred around them. They traded long, hot kisses, tongues tangling, tracing, caressing. Hands tugged on clothes, legs hooked, hips thrust against thighs, rubbing red-hot arousal against clothed flesh. Neither knew where all this heat came from, all this sudden, desperate desire, and neither of them questioned it, just accepted it as the momentary relief it was, like the thunderstorm above, a catalyst, a release for the mounting tension in the air.

It was sharp and clumsy and indirect. The brick wall behind them got dirt on Remus' robe and Sirius' hands, but they didn't care, they clung to each other in the stormy evening light, the dark clouds above and the brilliant sunset on the horizon forgotten as they wrestled with more primal forces within.

Lightning flashed, thunder rolled in the distance, silence fell. The calm before hell broke loose.

Remus lifted his sweaty face from Sirius neck and looked at him, long and hard, silently tracing Sirius' features with his fingertips, wiping away the dirt that clung to the sweat on Sirius' brow. In his eyes, Sirius saw something coiling, something other than the wolf, something purely human, purely Remus. Fear and love wrestling over dominion. And in a flash, Sirius understood.

Remus knew. He knew what kind of love Sirius wanted from him. He knew it, and he feared it. He loved Sirius, really loved him and wanted to make him happy, but he feared giving himself over to Sirius to the extent in which Sirius had given himself over to him. He feared giving exactly that which Sirius wanted most of him. Unconditional, unreserved love. And in this, Sirius knew, lay asleep the potential seed of their destruction.

"If you want me to wear a ring, like James and Lily do, I will," Remus whispered.

Sirius chuckled humourlessly, shaking his head. If it were but that simple.

Cool fingers settled under his chin, lifted his head so he couldn't escape Remus' eyes. "I love you, you know," Remus said, gently but firmly.

"I know," Sirius said, unable to turn his eyes away from Remus'. But is it enough? The question echoed in his mind, unvoiced.

Images of the last year flashed by his eyes. Laughter and arguments, cooking and playing, sex and comfort, lashing out and apologising, cutting each other deeply and licking each other's wounds. Intense and loving and painful. Worth it. Worth even having Remus' heart, but never quite all of it, never that last corner that nobody ever saw, not even he. Worth even knowing that Remus didn't trust him enough for that.

"Time," Remus whispered. "Give me time."

Sirius nodded. "Yes. I love you."

Remus smiled. "I know."

It would have to be enough. For now.


End file.
